


To Noise Making

by mayflowers07



Series: i can be the one you call [11]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Crying, Disability, Disabled Character, Gen, Hugging, Hurt/Comfort, Neurodiversity, No beta we die like Cleo and Beef from Scar’s fireworks, Pain, Panic Attacks, Platonic Relationships, Self-Doubt, Sensory Overload, because i’m neurodivergent and that’s my reference point, internalized ableism, so because of that, this is based on my experiences with stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29712882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayflowers07/pseuds/mayflowers07
Summary: Sometimes, the world was too loud for Ren.Sometimes, everything would build up until Ren would get overwhelmed, sending him into sensory overload and leaving him broken and in pain.But the fear of being seen as unsightly and a burden because of his issues lead to Ren never disclosing this fact to the other Hermits.Until one day when the noise gets too much, and Ren doesn’t have a choice whether the Hermits see him at his weakest or not.(Part of a series but can be read as a standalone fic)
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Rendog & Docm77, Rendog & Grian, Rendog & Xisumavoid, only some good ol’ found family
Series: i can be the one you call [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051148
Comments: 66
Kudos: 203





	To Noise Making

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based off of my experiences with sensory issues, sensory overload, and internalized ableism as a neurodivergent individual. If something written seems inaccurate to you or your experiences, you are one-hundred percent valid, this is just my personal take on it.
> 
> In case you haven’t read the other fics in this series, let me explain the concept this series is based off of: in Hermitcraft there is a code phrase Xisuma introduced years ago- blue creeper. If anyone says the phrase, it means something is seriously wrong and that everything has to be stopped to deal with whoever said it. It’s a way to ensure that even though the Hermits all prank each other, fight in wars, and have conflicts, it stays friendly and nothing gets taken too far. It also acts as an emergency SOS when someone is in immediate danger.

Ren was a sensitive guy. 

And yes, that was true mentally- Ren was never going to deny that he could be quite an emotional man sometimes- but few also knew of what that meant physically. His heightened senses due to being a wolf-hybrid meant that he could easily hear the distant bleating of sheep chunks away, see the familiar thatched houses of villages before anyone else while exploring, and smell the gunpowder in hidden TNT traps.

Dealing with the sensory input used to be easier when he was younger, when he was just a child running through the thick oak woods of his birth server with Jono hot on his heels, playing tag and play fighting with sticks. His old server was a fantasy-based one, with a population of only a few small scattered towns and the most complicated machinery to be found being simple redstone railway systems. During his childhood, having advanced senses were helpful for hunting dinner throughout the day and guarding against the monsters that came out at night.

But then Ren grew up. He moved on. He journeyed to servers with thousands of players each and grinding redstone monstrosities that took up entire chunks. Those first years, learning to adapt to the never-ending flow of loud intrusive noise into his ears, to the burning in his nose of so many new smells assaulting him, and the constant onslaught of movement around his peripheral vision was a painful process. 

Eventually he learned. Coping mechanisms were adopted, like never leaving the house without his sunglasses or always carrying around a blindness potion just in case.

It also really helped once he joined Hermitcraft. The entire server had quite a low population that typically spaced itself out, so Ren never necessarily felt the crushing claustrophobia large public servers sometimes gave him. Also all of the Hermits were generally nice people. They understood that some days when Ren wore his sunglasses even while indoors or flinched away from note blocks and other loud noises, it was easier if they talked quieter and didn’t make him move around too much.

Still Ren always wondered how his friends would react if things got _bad._ Because none of them had ever seen Ren on a bad day, on a day where Ren couldn't even look at his communicator because the screen would be too bright, on a day when even the sound of a gentle breeze or his own clothes shifting against his skin or just breathing would seem like too much and would send him collapsing into a dark corner of his base trying to block out the painfully overwhelming stimuli.

Did Ren have trust in his friends? Did he think they would be understanding and kind if he went into sensory overload in public in front of them? Absolutely.

Was there always going to be that small part of his mind that feared them calling him a freak or other awful names for having a meltdown or them blaming him for being an inconvenience and telling him to just get over it? Well, maybe a bit.

That was fine though. That was perfectly acceptable, because Ren never had a bad day in front of anyone. He always managed to keep his issues to himself. 

Almost always, that is.

… 

Ren wished he could say that he was surprised to return to Hermitcraft after missing only a few weeks to visit family and learn that several cults had formed around a mysterious alien device that crashed in the shopping district, but he couldn’t. That sentence wasn’t even in the top ten weirdest things his server had come up with.

Still, while standing around with Grian, Doc, Tango, Scar, and Keralis waiting for the timer to go off and end the entire season or turn them all into hobbits or send them on vacation or spawn in a gigantic infinibee (seriously, how did Cub come up with that one?), he had to admit it was definitely up there.

“I’m just saying,” Tango joked as they looked out over the individual groups that had met up around the crash site, “If this whole thing really is Mumbo’s doing like you think and we end up getting screwed over by it, I’m not opposed to sicking a few ravagers on him for revenge.”

Grian wheezed out a laugh. “Oh my god, imagine his face if he went to feed his base and got murdered by a bunch of them.”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

The whole group laughed and began poking fun at the bee society sitting in their little elevated base, as well as the two apocalypse prepper, who were hidden somewhere around the server in a bunker, waiting for Judgement Day or something.

Ren didn’t really participate much in the conversation other than a few nods and hums in agreement. Truth be told, all of the stimuli in the shopping district- specifically the sweaty smell of many moving bodies, the smoky smell of burning campfires and magma blocks, and the tangy, bitter smell of chorus fruit- was giving him a headache. The pulses of painful pressure against the front of his forehead made concentrating on small talk hard.

Without warning the clock seemed to have reached zero. Everyone around it yelped or jumped in surprise when the bottom half of the device exploded and fireworks began raining out of the top. 

Everyone except Ren that was, because all Ren comprehended in the moment was **loud,** the smell of gunpowder, **loud,** flashing lights, **loud,** voices yelling, **everything was too loud.**

As soon as the fireworks began going off full force, filling the air with their throbbing blasts of bright, burning colours and waves of sound crashing into him that pierced through his skull like he was shot with a poison arrow, Ren flinched violently away, almost falling off of the building they were all perched in. His hands instinctual went to his ears to escape the **noise, noise, noise, noise oh god so much noise.**

“Ren? You good?” a very distinct voice asked him. Ren fought the urge to back further away from the person **they were so loud loud loud loud,** but the fireworks show had ended and while everything was still quite overwhelming and painfully raw to deal with, it was bearable at least.

He looked up and reluctantly moved his hands down to see Doc waiting and staring at him while everyone else took off to investigate the mystery under the HCBBS device.

Ren tried to answer normally, though there was a strained push in his voice due to the splitting headache he now sported, along with the tons of other ambient sounds of the shopping district all hitting him at once that he was trying to fight against. “What? Yeah dude, it just surprised me a whole lot.”

Doc narrowed his eyes a bit, like he didn’t really believe Ren was okay but ended up just shrugging in acceptance. Together the two of them jumped into the little room that had opened up underneath the device.

And Ren had hoped that being underground would maybe muffle some of the ugly noises squeezing his head like a vice grip **too much,** some of the burning smells so potent he could practically taste them **too much,** some of the piercing light scorching his eyes **too much so much everything all at once.**

But once he hopped into the hole, he learned quite the opposite in fact. The acrid smell of shifting seething bodies and the sounds of their talking and breathing and hearts beating was everywhere, penetrating deep into Ren’s consciousness with no mercy. He felt the blood drain from his face as his headache continued to pound against his skull, and the assault on his nose was so much he clenched his fist to avoid the urge to dry heave that rose in him. 

Doc shot him a quick, concerned glance out of the corner of his eye, but Ren was too busy blinking rapidly against the swirling bright spots in his vision to care too much. Vaguely he heard Grian reading off of the boards in the front of the room, and Ren tried to latch on to just his words, to drown out the incessant buzzing of every other sound **too much sound too much light too much scents too too much.**

As soon as Grian finished announcing what the boxes were for, Ren gritted his teeth and tried to focus on finding his name, getting his new base, and leaving the awfully suffocating **noisy noisy noisy** room.

But a quick look around the space soon showed him an obvious truth: he hadn’t put his name in the device in the first place, so there was no box for him. On a normal day, he’d probably joke about his own stupid mistake with his friends, but dealing with that on top of the worst sensory overload he had dealt with the whole season was too much. Ren found himself stumbling into a corner of the room and facing the smooth concrete wall in a desperate pleading attempt to deafen the many constant sensations bombarding him.

Someone near him laughed loudly at something, and Ren felt himself shaking like a leaf as warm tears pooled in his eyes, because the never-ending sound was like being struck by lightning, hot and burning and bouncing around in his head and tearing him apart piece by piece and **so loud so bright so many feeling he felt like he was going to e x p l o d e.**

A new sensation broke through the screaming hum of everything else his jumbled thoughts were trying to sort through- a cold metallic hand grasping his shoulder. Ren tried desperately to focus on that stimuli and not everything else, and he turned to face the hand’s owner.

Doc was studying Ren with an intense, worried look in his eyes, with Keralis and Tango both right behind Doc, also trying to find out what was going on with him.

“Ren what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” Keralis inquired, but that voice, even though Keralis was speaking at a normal-volume tone, felt incredibly loud to Ren’s frazzled, overstimulated mind.

Whimpering and slamming his hands over his fuzzy wolf-hybrid ears, Ren curled inwards and groaned out, voice unstable and pained, “Blue creeper, too much noise, please make it stop, it’s too much.”

The three men in front of him immediately tensed up at the use of the code word. Doc was the first to react though, turning around to face the other two and whispering something in both of their ears too quiet for even Ren to pick up. Keralis and Tango both nodded and began moving through the crowd of other Hermits in the group, whispering to them the same way.

Ren only saw that much though, because then Doc began typing on his communicator and lifted the screen to face Ren so he could read it:

_Docm77: If you want, i can take my lab coat off and you can wear it over your head to block things out. Tap me once for yes_

The idea of having a layer of fabric to at least muffle the neverending flow of loud noises sounded amazing, so Ren reached out a quaking hand and tapped Doc once on the forearm that still held his shoulder.

Doc nodded and shrugged off his lab coat before gently placing it on top of Ren in a way that probably looked ridiculous, but the instant relief as most of the light from the room was shaded and Ren was left in sweet, comforting darkness overpowered that embarrassment. The coat smelled strongly of Doc, the mossy scent of creeper fur intermingling with the metallic notes of redstone dust in a powerful way that was slightly more bearable then the millions of indistinguishable scents in the shopping district.

For the first time in a while Ren felt himself relaxing a bit, his thoughts unspooling from the jumbled mess they had become.

After a few minutes, the sound of bodies shuffling around the room and hushed voices decreased bit by bit, until soon the only other sounds his hearing could pick up were Doc’s occasional movements, everyone else having cleared out. Ren spent a bit more time under the coat in blessed silence, inching his way through the fragile remains of his overstimulated mind and just trying to breathe. Once he was sure he could handle the world again, he carefully pulled the lab coat off his head and around his shoulders.

A couple of changes had been made to the room while he was under the fabric- someone had blocked the hole in the ceiling off with the dirt, meaning that while the gentle lighting from the lanterns around the area still made Ren wince a bit when the light throbbed in his sensitive eyes, it was much better than the stabbing bursts of burning fiery colours it had been before. Likewise the many ambient sounds of the shopping district that once overwhelmed him were now muffled, so he found himself able to think more clearly.

Doc was knelt beside Ren, perfectly focused on his friend. When he noticed Ren slowly starting to get reaccustomed with the environment, he gave a warm friendly smile and raised his communicator again.

_Doc: you okay to talk? Or do you want to just type? Or we can just be silent for as long as you need? Your choice_

Ren hummed and considered. His headache was still there, but he didn’t feel like he was drowning in the loud noises of the world like he had before. He cleared his throat and replied in a breathy rasp, “Talking is fine, but keep it quiet.”

“Of course,” Doc responded, barely above a whisper. His voice was soothing, rough and familiar to Ren after years of friendship. “What do you need from me?”

The realization of how shaken up he felt, how his emotions felt stripped away and exposed like a wire, how the entire server had been forced to evacuate because of his sensory overload, and how now they were probably talking about how much of a useless freak he was built up in Ren. His bottom lip quivered as those building tears began blurring his vision again. The world felt like it was crashing down on top of him.

“Can we just stay here for a bit? And… can I get a hug? Please?” he softly cried out and pleaded.

Doc’s facial expression melted into something sympathetic and loving. “Of course Ren. Anything for you.”

The half-creeper pulled Ren into a hug, basically pulling Ren onto his lap, and within the strong arms of one of his best friends, dealing with the torment of negative worry plaguing his thoughts, Ren allowed himself to cry in the quiet and darkened room.

… 

The next day brought many new experiences for Ren. He woke up in his own base in his bed, Doc’s lab coat still tucked over him like a blanket, and Doc himself passed out on a chair placed beside his bed, watching over him while he slept.

Doc was a godsend that whole morning. He helped Ren make breakfast, stayed around for a few hours to help him with some errands, and then headed back to his (or apparently Cub’s) base with the promise that if anything was wrong, Ren would text him right away. 

A few other Hermits also stopped by throughout the day. Impulse and Grian both came over to chat for a bit and try and get him smiling with their usual group banter, and Impulse also gave him a few free beacons as a gift out of nowhere. False stopped by with the excuse of “borrowing some resources,” but Ren knew her well enough to know it was her way of checking up on him without making him feel smothered. Iskall also visited, loaded down with some pie Stress had baked and sent them with, and Ren could admit the two of them had a good time enjoying the sweet dessert together.

But all of Ren’s friends could probably tell how off he was the whole day. He retreated back into himself whenever he felt he was getting too loud, and he found himself to be skittish and apologetic for every little thing. Ren just couldn’t let go of the notion that everyone was secretly judging him and his overreaction. He loved his friends, and the idea that all of them would be looking down on him and seeing him as less than because of his sensory overload made his self-consciousness go through the roof. 

Still, when his last visitor of the evening turned out to unsurprisingly be Xisuma, who asked Ren if he was okay with ‘discussing some stuff,’ he knew those feelings wouldn’t stay hidden for long.

Xisuma sat across from him in his sitting room, the admin’s posture as composed as ever but with a certain tenseness in his shoulders and neck he usually only got when he was worried about one of his Hermits.

“I would like to have this conversation with you now,” Xisuma assured Ren, who was fidgeting like crazy with nervous energy, “but I understand if you’re tired from everything that happened yesterday. It’s completely on your terms Ren.”

A grimace pulled Ren’s lips against his fangs, and his claws anxiously stroked up and down his bare arms. Xisuma was super kind and reassuring. If there was anyone he could talk to, it had to be the admin.

“No, it’s fine. I’m an open-book,” he answered somewhat reluctantly.

Xisuma hummed at that and continued, “Okay, very good. So first off, I wanted to check up on you physically. Are you feeling okay in that regard?”

Well, his heart was racing in his chest, his thoughts were speeding almost in anxiety attack territories, and the constant petrifying fear of being seen as something gross and unsightly to others had left him feeling lethargic and tired all day, so no, not necessarily.

“Yup! A-okay! Doc forced me to head straight to bed once I was up to walk around, and people have been forcing food in me all day, so I’m good to go.”

“Oh, that’s lovely to hear,” Xisuma reassured, “I also wanted to know if anything specific triggered the meltdown in the shopping district. Is there anything we need to ban or put warnings on for you?”

Ren grimaced a bit at the word ‘meltdown.’ He felt like a child again, throwing temper tantrums and causing scenes over nothing. “No, not in particular. Like everyone probably told you, it was a lot for me to handle and I freaked out over it.”

Xisuma blinked at Ren’s self-deprecating tone. “Yes, but it’s fine that you felt overwhelmed. With all of the noise and people around, it was probably a lot to deal with, especially with your disability.”

There was a pause as Ren considered Xisuma’s choice of words. “What?” He eventually gasped, “Hold on a minute, disability is a big word to be throwing around, don’t you think?”

Something must have clicked in Xisuma’s brain at that, because he scooted on the couch to be closer to Ren. Reaching out to grab Ren’s hand, Xisuma began rubbing his thumb soothingly across the back of it. “Ren, wolf hybrids as well as a few other hybrid types are known to experience environmental sensitivity and even sensory overload when faced with an abundance of constant stimuli. What you experience is normal for your kind, but it does handicap you and interferes with your ability to experience life in certain aspects, so it is technically a disability, and that’s okay.”

Ren sputtered a few words in protest. “But it’s all in my head and stuff. It’s not a real disability like Scar muscular disease or Doc, Iskall, and TFC’s prosthetics, or even your breathing issues.”

Xisuma nodded in understanding. “I think you’re dealing with some internalized ableism, and I get it. You’re not visibly disabled, so you feel like you don’t deserve accommodations and help. Maybe you also worry about being a burden and undesirable as a friend to those who don’t know what you’re dealing with, so you prefer to hide and pretend to not be suffering at all instead.”

A lump formed in Ren’s throat, and pressure built in the back of his eyes. His whole time being a member of the Hermitcraft server, or really any public server at all, he had feared being seen as weird and being rejected because of the problems he had with his senses that others didn’t understand, so he worked them out by himself and coped alone. Yet Xisuma was right there, perfectly describing his fears without insulting him or casting him out like he had feared.

The admin must have noticed the sadness twisting Ren’s features, because he made a sympathetic noise and continued, “If you want, think about it this way: if someone told Iskall their dysphoria wasn’t real, told Etho he shouldn’t wear the mask to help cope with his social anxiety, or told Zedaph to stop coming to Tango and Impulse about his intrusive thoughts because they were ‘fake,’ how would you react?”

The meaning of Xisuma’s words dawned on Ren, and he shuddered as his cheeks grew wet. He swallowed and responded in a voice thick with tears, “I would be upset. I’d tell them they’re wrong, because that would hurt my friends.”

A pair of arms threw themselves over Ren’s shoulders and pulled him into a lulling hug. “And you deserve to know that we would all defend you in the same way, Ren. Some days I think to myself that we are all a bunch of broken puzzle pieces on this server, trying to come together and be something more than what we fear is the worst of us. If you need a little accommodating here or there to help you along the way and help you fit into our puzzle, we are all more than willing to do so- anything for you.”

And as Ren let his worries out with a cry muffled into Xisuma’s shoulder plate, he felt at peace enough to admit that leaning on his friends for help when needed didn’t sound as intimidating anymore.

…

A week later Ren found himself back in the shopping district, this time for another unknown reason.

“Grian, my dude, if this is a prank or something, and I take this blindfold off to find myself covered in pink concrete powder or something, I will throw you into the ocean.”

The man in question giggled but continued his mission of leading a blinded Ren by his wrists through the district to an unknown destination. “How dare you judge me like this? I’ve been working really hard on this surprise- I even got Mumbo’s help with the redstone and Bdubs and Scar’s help with the design.”

Ren begrudgingly allowed Grian to continue dragging him along until the two of them came to a sudden halt. The very near sound of crashing waves indicated that they were probably standing on the edge of the mooshroom island. 

“Okay,” Grian announced, the sound of his wings fluttering rapidly broadcasting his excitement, “open your eyes!”

An affectionate sigh at the other’s enthusiasm escaped Ren as he took the blindfold off, that quickly morphed to confusion at the sight of a small quartz and iron structure that looked remarkably like a docked ship with a slab path connecting ashore and leading to a water elevator inside the vessel leading somewhere downwards below deck.

“So what is this exactly?” Ren asked.

“It’s been lovingly named by me as the S.S. Hermitcraft or otherwise known as the Safe Space for Hermitcraft! If you go down into the ship, you will find that it’s been engineered so that the light level inside can be controlled. If you want it pitch black or if you want just a bit of light, you can have whatever you need. Also the entire building is completely noise-cancelling to the outside world, but there is a system in place to play some ambient music or background noise if your heart desires.”

Grian was looking at Ren expectantly and with barely controlled energy. It took Ren a few seconds to understand what Grian was getting at. “Wait, hold on- did you build this whole thing for me?”

“I mean, technically yes,” the smaller man conceded. “It was after what happened with the HCBBS stuff that the idea came to me, but I really think this could be useful to so many other Hermits. Now we have a little corner of the world so if anyone’s ever feeling overwhelmed or scared or just in need of a break, there is somewhere tucked away for them. The main room of the ship is filled with beds and pillows and blankets and everything someone would need to get all comfy, there’s a small bar stocked with emergency potions, some comfort food, and water, and I was thinking about maybe getting Xisuma to code it so that-”

The rambling was cut off by Ren yanking Grian into a crushing hug and laughing in awe, “Dude, you are the sweetest, most considerate person I’ve ever met. What the heck, thank you so much!”

Grian beamed at Ren and threw his arms around his waist. “Aw, you’re very welcome bro! Anything for you!”

While a hyperactive Grian began pulling Ren into the ship and explaining to him the meticulously designed vessel and its many great features, Ren couldn’t stop the huge grin on his face at his friends’ support.

After years of worry and anxiety over the subject, Ren was willing to admit to and deal with his disability one day at a time. Because if Ren really was like a broken puzzle piece, it was amidst the other Hermits that Ren finally found the place he fit the picture.

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhhh I’m sorry this took absolutely forever to get out. I’ve been crazy sick with food poisoning the last week (note to self: check the expiration date on cans of whipped cream from now on) and have just not had the focus to write anything coherent. My bad guys.
> 
> Still, I hope you enjoyed this update. I sometimes feel a lot like what I’ve described, this fear that you’re ‘not disabled enough’ so you don’t deserve any help from others because of it. Writing this fic was quite cathartic to me, so maybe it’ll provide some comfort for you guys too.
> 
> If you have any headcanons or ideas about this AU, please let me know in the comments. I love seeing everything you guys come up with and talking about your ideas. Or you can follow me on tumblr @mayflowers07 *insert shameless self-promotion* and we can talk there!
> 
> Thank you all so so so so much for the support this series has gotten, you’re absolutely my biggest motivators to keep writing. <3<3<3


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